By Charlie Mahtesian and Calder McHugh

Speaker Kevin McCarthy speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol today. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

CROSSOVER CRISIS — Today, Speaker Kevin McCarthy made a decision that could save his gavel for now but cost him the House majority next fall.

After months of speculation and pressure from much of the House Republican conference, McCarthy announced that he would direct three House committees to open an Impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Aside from the constitutional implications of the inquiry, the decision is all but certain to rattle the House election landscape next year. Why? The GOP currently has a narrow five-seat majority and there are 18 House Republicans who represent districts won by Biden in 2020. By comparison, there are only five House Democrats who represent districts won by Trump in 2020. Protecting those 18 seats is essential to Republican hopes of maintaining control of the House.

It was a tough task to begin with, since many of those “crossover districts” are suburban-based and all but one of them are located in blue states. Now it’s likely to be even harder, which is why moderates have been trying to slow the hardliners’ rush toward impeachment.

“Impeachment needs to be about the dad, not the son… as of now, I don’t support [an impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said, referring to what he called corruption by Hunter Biden for using his father’s name to enrich himself. Bacon occupies an Omaha-oriented district where the president defeated Donald Trump, 52 percent to 46 percent.

Republicans like Bacon have good cause for concern, based on the political fallout of the first Trump impeachment. Of the two Trump impeachments, that’s the one that offers the clearer view of the political implications. The second Trump impeachment took place just as Trump’s term in office expired in 2021; the electoral consequences are impossible to separate from the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection that preceded it.

Back in 2019, when Democrats held the House and initiated impeachment proceedings, 31 Democrats represented districts that Trump had won in the previous election. Eight of them lost their reelection bids, including Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump.

When the dust settled after the 2020 election, 10 of the 31 crossover districts were gone: the eight where Democratic incumbents lost, a New Jersey district where Rep. Jeff Van Drew switched parties in large part because of impeachment-related political pressures and an Iowa district where the incumbent retired and the GOP won the open seat race to succeed him.

The Democratic defeats in 2020 can’t be pinned on impeachment alone — there were other forces at play in nearly all of those contests. But the noise surrounding Trump’s impeachment unquestionably colored the debate that fall and the outcome. Republican challengers used impeachment to paint Democratic incumbents as being part of “the circus in Washington” or as lockstep supporters of Nancy Pelosi. In New York, where GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney knocked off then-Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi, she argued that in voting to impeach Trump, Brindisi had sided with the forces of socialism rather than preserving “American greatness.”

Another political lesson from the first impeachment: Republicans in crossover districts are going to be on full blast from here on out. With the 2019 impeachment, the overheated rhetoric surrounding the political consequences began almost immediately. During the inquiry stage in fall 2019, the National Republican Congressional Committee pronounced the pursuit of impeachment “a political death sentence” for then-Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.). (It wasn’t; he’s now the state’s lieutenant governor.) After Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) voted to impeach, his opponent described him as “toast.” (He wasn’t).

McCarthy has insisted that beginning the impeachment inquiry won’t require a vote — a move assuredly intended to protect his crossover caucus. But hardline Republicans already calling for McCarthy’s head won’t be satisfied with an inquiry that goes nowhere; they’ll want to bring charges. There’s a good chance it spells doom for some of their colleagues in 2024.

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Generative AI is at an inflection point. With the recent announcements of AI-driven natural language processing (NLP) tools being integrated into search engines and the broader web, generative AI could be transformational in changing the business model of search and how we access content on the web. Access in-depth analysis on the potential implications in the Citi GPS Report, Generative AI.

— Harris announces House bid after election fraud controversy: Republican Mark Harris announced today that he will run for Congress in North Carolina, five years after his campaign was the subject of fraud allegations. Harris is running for the state’s 8th District, which is expected to be an open seat with incumbent GOP Rep. Dan Bishop running for state attorney general next year. When Harris ran for the House in 2018, he initially led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes after the votes were tallied. But the election board declined to certify the results and ordered a do-over election the following year amid accusations that McCrae Dowless, an operative hired by Harris’ campaign consultants, organized an illegal scheme to collect and mark absentee ballots.

— Alex Jones colleague gets 60 days for Jan. 6 misdemeanor: A judge today sentenced InfoWars broadcaster Owen Shroyer — who shadowed his boss and ally Alex Jones onto Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021 — to 60 days in prison for breaching the restricted area. U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly handed down the sentence after contending that Shroyer, who never entered the Capitol building, played a role in “amping up” the mob at a sensitive moment during the riot. Shroyer’s foray onto Capitol grounds came even though Shroyer had been ordered to stay away from the area under a court-sanctioned agreement for disrupting a House impeachment hearing in 2019.

— Trump privately discussed Biden impeachment with House GOPers: Donald Trump has been weighing in behind the scenes in support of the House GOP push to impeach President Joe Biden, including talking with a member of leadership in the lead up to today’s announcement authorizing a formal impeachment inquiry. The former president has been speaking weekly with House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who was the first member of Republican leadership to come out in support of impeachment. The two spoke today, the same day House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Republicans would be pursuing the inquiry, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

GO INSIDE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST DIPLOMATIC PLATFORM WITH UNGA PLAYBOOK: The 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly will jam some of the world's most influential leaders into four city blocks in Manhattan. POLITICO's special edition UNGA Playbook will take you inside this important gathering starting Sept. 17 — revealing newsy nuggets throughout the week and insights into the most pressing issues facing global decision-makers today. Sign up for UNGA Playbook.

TOUGH TALK ON MEXICO — Former president Donald Trump proposed a naval blockade of Mexico. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to send drones and Special Forces over the southern border starting “on day one.” And investor Vivek Ramaswamy imagined launching a “shock-and-awe” military campaign against drug cartels, reports the Washington Post.

Republican candidates are engaged in a rhetorical arms race, vying to one up each other with tough talk on the U.S. border with Mexico, taking the 2016 rallying cry of Trump to “build the wall” to the next level. The bellicose proposals reflect widespread Republican outrage over immigration, as well as the ongoing crisis of opioid deaths. “It’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said in a campaign video.

But Mexican officials and independent security analysts have cautioned that military force by the United States would fail to quickly stop drug trafficking while torching relations with its southern neighbor and risking significant casualties.

AGED OUT — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that the ages of President Biden and former President Donald Trump are "absolutely a legitimate concern" for voters in the 2024 presidential race and believes Americans will be ready for the next generation of leadership if he is the GOP's pick to face-off against Mr. Biden in the general election.

"The presidency is not a job for someone that's 80 years old," DeSantis, a GOP candidate for president, told "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell. "And there's nothing, you know, wrong with being 80. Obviously I'm the governor of Florida. I know a lot of people who are elderly. They're great people. But you're talking about a job where you need to give it 100%. We need an energetic president."

THE 2024 CASH DASH — Political ad spending is projected to reach new heights by the end of the 2024 election cycle, eclipsing $10 billion in what would amount to the most expensive two years in political history, reports NBC News.

AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ad spending, projects that campaigns and outside groups will spend $2.7 billion on ads in the presidential election alone, followed by $2.1 billion on the Senate, $1.7 billion on the House, $361 million on gubernatorial elections and $3.3 billion on other elections.

It's no surprise that the presidential race is expected to drive the spending, as it does every election cycle. But the $10.2 billion projection for 2024 would be a 13% increase over the $9 billion spent in 2020, when two self-funding Democratic billionaires unsuccessfully ran for president. And it represents a massive increase from the $2.6 billion spent during the 2016 election cycle.

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President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi attends a meeting during the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 24. | Kim Ludbrook/AFP via Getty Images

THAWING, NOT UNFROZEN — The Biden administration is pushing back after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his government would choose how it will use the $6 billion in frozen funds set to be released by Washington in a prisoner exchange deal, writes Matt Berg.

The deal, which would see South Korea releasing frozen Iranian funds to Qatar, marks a diplomatic breakthrough for the U.S. and Iran, as they have sparred over issues from the Iran nuclear deal to Tehran’s continued ties with Moscow. That money can be used only for humanitarian goods like food and medicine, the Biden administration has said.

However, Raisi told NBC News that the money “belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government, so the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money.”

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller denied Raisi’s assertion, telling reporters on this afternoon that the funds would arrive in banks in Qatar and would be “under strict oversight” by the Treasury Department.

“The money can only be used for humanitarian purposes,” Miller told reporters. “We will remain vigilant in watching the spending of those funds and have the ability to freeze them again if we need to.”

JOIN 9/19 FOR A TALK ON BUILDING THE NEW AMERICAN ECONOMY: The United States is undergoing a generational economic transformation, with a renewed bipartisan emphasis on manufacturing. Join POLITICO on Sept. 19th for high-level conversations that examine the progress and chart the next steps in preserving America’s economic preeminence, driving innovation and protecting jobs. REGISTER HERE.

EARLY WARNING SIGNS — In the last decade, it’s become clear that NFL players in particular have developed CTE — damage to the brain from repeated contact to the head. It’s shortened their lives and affected them in numerous ways, from increasing depression and suicide to other degenerative brain injuries. But now, as research develops, it’s become clear that these conditions can start well before the NFL comes calling. Children who play rough contact sports like football are also suffering from the effects of CTE — and some are dying from it, via suicide or unintentional drug overdose. For WIRED, Celia Ford looks into new research making this point and what it could mean for the future of youth contact sports.

On this date in 1968: A UNICEF helicopter is pictured practicing a food lift at Lagos Airport, Nigeria. A group of Americans, some with experience in the Vietnam War, piloted helicopters for UNICEF, dropping food supplies to aid starving Biafrans in Nigeria in the midst of a civil war that saw the Nigerian government fight with the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state. Televised images of malnourished Biafran children saturated Western media and increased humanitarian aid from NGOs to the region. | Dennis Lee Royle/AP Photo

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A message from Citi:

Generative AI is at an inflection point.

With the recent announcements of AI-driven natural language processing (NLP) tools being integrated into search engines and the broader web, generative AI could transform the way we search for things on the internet, use information, and communicate with each other.

By providing a conversational style response to an inquiry instead of links to suggested sites, generative AI could make the overall search and browsing experience more natural and intuitive, potentially reshaping the way we search for travel, buy goods, and research products.

Access in-depth analysis in the Citi GPS Report, Generative AI.

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